


take him for ballast

by drphil



Category: Jaws (Movies), Jaws - Peter Benchley
Genre: Belligerent Sexual Tension, Enemies to Lovers, Gen, M/M, Prequel, enemies to enemies that are lovers, jaws is gay and needed more quint/hooper representation, working-class hero crap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-19 03:39:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19348744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drphil/pseuds/drphil
Summary: “M-Mr. Quint!” Not the bold homecoming Matt was envisioning; he has to cough it out three times. Quint’s home-brew hasn’t gotten any weaker in the last decade. But he presses on, flashing a toothy smile. “You’re gonna need an extra hand.”“This is Matt Hooper—"“I know who he is.”





	take him for ballast

**Author's Note:**

> but still jaws is gay now. and there's nothing you can do about it. jaws is gay. i just wanted you to know that

1967

The five o’clock crew was the worst shift at the Oceanographic Institute. It was just the time when the sports boaters would be out after work, and the academics on shore would be randy and ready to drink, and combined, they formed a menace to the waters. Occasionally, a fight might break out, but nothing exciting enough to write home about as the captains couldn’t throw punches from their separate boats, so the shift had no real merit, other than hastily trying to build up credit hours. There were usually six to eight students per boat, but as luck would have it, only four showed up for the assignment. Because who leaves Nantucket for this? On a _weekend?_

Matt wanted to complain about his luck, he really did. But damn, did the salty wind feel great in his hair, damp curls pasted to his glasses as the vessel sped out across the Atlantic. Nothing he could have planned for the weekend matched it, nothing ever did. He’d already known that in the back of his mind when he showed up on the docks, bright and early.

They dropped anchor somewhere around West Tisbury, where the sonar was most active, and cracked open a cooler chocked full of beer. They passed around the cans, but Matt’s remained unopened on the deck, in favor of furiously booting up one of the machines. 

“Matthew,” a girl, Rochelle, drawled, as she wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “Where’s your sense of adventure?” 

“Please don’t doubt it,” Hooper turned to grin at her. “But I’ve got an acoustic tag on a nice big bluefin, here, and I, uh, wanna be sure she’s around—“

“She is, and she’s right here,” the brunette murmured in his ear. He stiffened a little, patted her on the back.

“And she’s had a bit much already, hasn’t she,” he said under his breath, not looking up from his equipment.

“Asshole.” 

Any regret Hooper felt as she withdrew her arm and stormed away became just a twinge when he checked the radar, where the offshore receiver line was lighting up like a Christmas tree. The acoustic and the radio tags were well within range. “She” was nearby, and she had friends. 

He jogged to the stern, where he snatched up a rod and began to string it.

“Hoop!” Another booze-equipped student trotted up alongside him, gently holding the end of the rod for him with his free hand. 

“I got locks on the bluefin and the reef shark,” Matt said excitedly, checking the water between his hastily-tied knots, like they might surface and greet him right there. “They’re right nearby, Terry, I knew they’d stay put where the food was right.”

Terry rolled his eyes. “You know you can't trust that radio shit. Too new. Haven’t worked out the kinks yet.” 

“Ye of little faith.” Hooper finished off the rod. “Just let me check, alright? Then I’ll come kick back, when I’ve single-handedly saved the entire group’s study.”

Terry half-smiled, dropping the pole for him. “Whatever you say, Mr. Rockefeller.”

“How’s about you fuck off, Ter?” Hooper said over his shoulder, raising his voice as another boat chugged by behind them. He rolled up his sleeves and reached for a rag. He wasn’t about to miss this alignment of the cosmos for a couple of Gansetts. But there’d better be a bar on the mainland.

As if on cue, the acoustic tag lit up, bright white, beeping steadily off the starboard. Matt sprang to grab the scrap bucket, but not before taking the time to turn to his classmates and flash a gloating smirk, to which he was waved off.

The chum he tossed overboard disappeared in a fit of bubbles almost immediately. He waited a moment before scooping another load. It’d be the reef shark, no doubt. 

And there she was. The white tips of her fins broke the surface, before the round bend of her snout, where she sucked the red water through her gills faster than a vacuum. 

“I didn’t even _have_ to feed her!” he said, watching the fish glide through the water, the sun bouncing off the waves reflecting little curving lines across her smooth, navy blue back. “God, look at her.”

“Yeah, Hoop, she wants you too.” Terry elbowed him. 

“Jesus.” Matt grabbed his wrist, yanking him closer to the rod. “Help me.”

As they leaned over the stern to grab the wire, there was a sharp, high-pitched little noise, a sort of whirr, and then a deep, unmistakable _thunk_. The entire boat rattled. Both men shot up, Terry even ducking down as his beer spilled over his fancy white boat shoes. 

“The hell was that?” he yelped.

Rochelle pointed towards port. “There! Over there!”

They both jerked their heads to the left to see a man in the distance, bent far over the side of his boat, a large gun between his outstretched arms as he took aim right where they were floating.

Every student ducked, screamed, someone threw a beer.

“The fuck, man?!” Terry was shouting over the transom.

Matt joined him bravely, peered over the wooden planks, trying to wave an arm without raising it too high. “Sir! Excuse me, sir, are you _shooting_ —”

The boat drifted closer, but it didn’t help to carry the man’s voice at all. He wasn’t lowering the gun.

“What’d you say, fuckhead?” Terry yelled. Hooper hit him. 

“He’s got a gun!”

“Said, I was aimin’ at the fish, not you!” The man finally lowered what looked to be a harpoon gun, letting it clunk to the deck. “Made me miss ‘im.”

Hooper straightened up, a burning kindling within him. He took in the sight of the man’s boat; a rickety single-masted vessel, splashed with red and white paint, barely two levels. Guy must live on the damn thing. Hooper couldn’t get a read on him underneath his tattered baseball cap, but he looked old, older than them, and definitely angry, kicking the weapon aside to charge to the back of his deck.

“That was _our_ shark, sir!” Matt fired back. “We’re from the Oceanographic Institute, we’re on a tracking study—“ 

“Don’t give a good goddamn what club you belong to,” the fisherman waved, pawed at the air. “All fair game out here. Get used to it!”

Matt knelt over the transom, wishing desperately for the other guy’s boat to float right up alongside them, allow easy entry, maybe with a harpoon or two of his own. 

“All due respect,” he started through his teeth, “But we have been tracking that shark’s whereabouts for a _month_ now, on the _Institute’s dime_ , and—“

“Nature’s a bitch, innit she?” The man grinned. His boat floated closer still; the back panel read “ORCA” in large, embossed letters, hard to make out between each dip it made below the surface, much further below than a structurally sound vessel should dip.

Venturing closer, the man was definitely middle-aged, and weathered to boot. He wore no life jacket, cloaked under an oversized corduroy jacket and a beard that could match even Hooper’s, peppered with gray and white discernible from the dark blonde. Matt wanted to punch his teeth in, or what was left of them.

“What the hell do you even want with a white tip anyway?” He hated that when he was furious, he simply resorted to nitpicking. “They’re no game.”

“Collection,” the fisherman said shortly. He began tying a knot around one of the cleats framing his fishing chair. The other end of the rope had a barrel on it.

“You are not ‘collecting’ our species,” Hooper said. He suddenly snatched his beer up and cracked it open, taking a sip. “Go fish somewhere else.” 

This made the man outright guffaw. He hunched over the back of the chair for support, removing his hat, bald spot shining in the sun. 

“Yeah? Somewhere else? You ever _been_ ‘round here, boy?” he challenged. Hooper rolled his eyes, unsure if the man could see or not, but he didn’t seem too happy regardless. “Your young, fruitful ass, tellin’ _me_ to take off? Some of us are out here tryin’ to make a living. Can’t have all your fancy chartered college boats. Fuck off with that shit. Get outta _my_ water.” He spat in the direction of their boat. “Go read somewhere else.”

“Hey, fuck this guy,” Terry snapped. “Get the anchor, Hoop. We don’t have time for this.”

Matt was visibly torn right down the middle, between fury and unease. “But the shark—“

“Look, you got the sonar, we’ll find it again. Dick might shoot us if you keep up with this.”

Or he’ll shoot her, Hooper wanted to say, but before he could get out the rest of his irrational fears, the loud cranking of an engine humming to life drowned out his voice, and he looked up to see the propeller of his opponent’s boat spewing water in their direction as it chugged away, out to sea. The wake left behind lapped at their transom, rocking the boat gently back and forth in the now eerie quiet.

“Guess it’s our water after all,” Rochelle commented, although her mouth still sounded dry. 

Hooper took another long, steady sip of his beer, watching the Orca boat grow smaller and smaller in the distance. “Yeah.” He finished off the can, looked at the others, and crunched it in his fist as he tossed it aside. “Uh, get the chum back out.”

 

“What town is this, again?” Matt asked, passing the joint pinched between his fingers to another woman, Barbara, who sat across the circle of students from him in the cold sand. She smiled shyly but appreciatively from under her large, round glasses. 

“Amity Island,” she said.

Terry snorted, one arm around Rochelle, unfortunately, and the other motioning impatiently for the grass. “Less of an island, more like a rock with an outhouse.”

“We should go find a bar,” Rochelle said.

Matt nodded somewhat absently, staring out at the darkening sky over the water. It had long since faded from orange, to pink, to a deep, saturated indigo, turning the ocean waves beneath it all but black as they lazily rolled over one another towards them, weaving themselves into the sand along the muddy shoreline.

“This place barely has a dock,” Terry complained.

“I know, poor baby,” Rochelle cooed, tugging on his collar as she stood up. “No butler to drive you there. Come on, then!” 

Terry huffed, putting the remainder of the joint out in the sand between them as he and the rest joined her at their feet. There had to be somewhere all the fishermen frequented; there couldn’t be anything else to _do_ out here but drink.

As they traipsed through the thick sands, stumbling a bit in the dimness of the evening, Matt hung towards the back of the group, half-listening to Terry ramble away about his summers at Cape Cod exchanging drinks with Tokyo’s most successful mixologist, and half-engrossed in the gentle lapping of the tide. They walked along the shoreline a bit, heading towards the lit-up buildings near the mainland ferries, and Matt could enjoy the sounds of Mother Nature just a little longer.

Soon, Barbara fell into step beside him, smiling briefly before looking back down at her feet. She didn’t speak, though.

He was so grateful for it that he did. “You did a fantastic job with that sturgeon today. Professor’s gonna cream himself when he sees the samples you got.”

She chuckled. “Thanks, Matt. Good job with that creep with the harpoon.”

Hooper swallowed as the memory flooded back from lying dormant in the back of his mind. Including the lingering embarrassment from being bested, by a close-minded old hack. His face burned again, and he was thankful for the darkness. “God,” he said. “What a psycho.”

She nodded and said nothing more. He liked Barb. 

As the group entered what Amity Island considered a town, they split, the girls heading down one street, the boys down the other. There were only two, after all. Matt and Terry found themselves down a much darker alley than the women had chosen, and while neither acknowledged it, they walked much closer than they had before, gazing up at the black, rickety structures, built on stilts, jutting out over the sea between the little handmade docks.

“I’m gonna go ahead and hypothesize that there ain’t a bar down here,” Terry said, his voice unnaturally edgy.

“Pussy.” Hooper pointed; in the distance there were several yellow squares glowing against the grim gray of the sky. “There’s something over there. Looks like a tavern.” 

“You better be right, or you’re swimming home.” 

As they approached the shack, which was at the dead end of the road, they squinted to peer into the windows. It was difficult to see around whatever decor hung in front of them, stacked up over each other for two stories. It was indeed all lit up, but given that the only two entrances were a large, rusted garage door and a tiny side entryway, it was pretty clear the building was not any sort of public haven.

“Well, I don’t really need my car fixed,” Terry said, “So let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Yeah, ‘cause you drive a Royce. Maybe they know where a bar is? Let’s ask.”

“Hoop,” Terry caught him and squared him by the shoulders. “I can see you’ve been in the sun too long. You’re losing it. Let’s _go_.”

“We will, we will,” Hooper said carefully, brushing him off, heading towards the splintered steps beneath the side door. “But I wanna party, and so do you, eh?”

Terry paused for an extended moment before reluctantly jogging up behind him. “Damn it, Matt.”

Hooper reached out and rapped his knuckles on the door, which groaned under the sudden movement and cracked right open. The sound of big band music softly poured out from what sounded like the upper floor. Hooper turned to Terry, contemptuous, and peeked through the thin line of light, unable to resist his inner voyeur. 

“Hello?” Matt called out confidently. “Anyone home? Just a quick question.” 

Silence.

“‘Scuze us!” He tried again, louder. “Hello?! We’re, uh, tourists, we—“ 

“Ah, fuck off, then!” came a heated response from inside.

Terry had already spun on his heel, almost instantly, and Hooper was about to drop his hand and follow suit, but something struck him abruptly, something strangely familiar.

He surprised even himself by shoving the door the rest of the way open.

Terry swore, unmoving at the foot of the stairs. “Matt! You're just asking to get shot today—“

A figure filled the doorwall, and Hooper froze.

“You again.” The large shadow of a man balled something up and chucked it angrily to the side, a rag, a foul-smelling one, at that. His hands framed the door as he hovered over Hooper, boring down. As he leaned in, his threadbare cap and cowled sweater came into focus in the dark, and the brusque voice was recognizable almost instantly. “Thought I told you to get lost.” 

Hooper stood his ground, trying his hardest to appear mostly unfazed, stared right back. “Well, you never told me your name,” he said.

The fisherman stepped back, grabbing the door. “Cocky piece of shit. Go back where you came from. Follow me home again, I dare ya.”

“Wait! We didn’t follow you,” Matt said quickly, and the man seemed to realize Matt wasn’t alone as he glanced down at Terry. Terry shuddered on the spot. “We wanted to go to a bar, we just don’t know our way around here.”

“This ain’t it.” The door started to close. 

“I’ll— I'll buy you a drink,” Matt stuck his arm out, dangerously close to having it consciously smashed.

“What the fuck?” Terry squeaked from below. The fisherman seemed to be equally as horrified by the idea.

“Who the hell do you think you are?”

This was his chance. Hooper valiantly kept his arm extended, hand out, pointed at the man’s chest. “My name’s Matt Hooper, I’m an intern at the Oceanographic Institute. Wood’s Hole. That’s Terry Wicker, my partner.”

“We’re sorry to disturb you,” Terry said upon being met with complete silence and not a single movement.  “Very sorry. Matt, buddy, how about we just go find the girls? Now?”

“Y’know what?” the fisherman growled, swatting Hooper’s hand down.

“It’s fine, sir, we’re leaving!” Terry leapt up on the step, tugging the back of Matt’s sweater. “Before we get murdered! Come on, man.” 

“You want a drink?” The man said. “C’mon in.”

Terry was saying something like, “No, that’s okay, Mister, really,” but when Matt turned around his eyes were lit up like headlights, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, and the words faded away. Fucking Matt loved a challenge more than anything.

“ _Really?_ ” he mouthed, hoping the older man’s eyesight was failing him in his later days. Hooper nodded eagerly.

“Well, thank you!” Hooper beamed. “We would love to.”

“Actually!” Terry’s voice was barely below the octave of a dog whistle. “I ought to go find our friends. Classmates. Um. Now. But you two have… fun.” He cocked his head at Hooper, seeking reassurance, though he was practically halfway down the block. 

“Then _I’d_ love to,” Matt said confidently. 

“Great,” the fisherman said flatly. He unceremoniously left the door hanging open as he retreated back inside.

Matt gave Terry a final wave and disappeared after him. Terry stared at the door a second longer, then turned and jogged away, quickly, shaking his head. Fucking Matt. He could only imagine the look that would soon be on Rochelle’s face.

 

Hooper could barely veil his excitement as he strode into the shack, but as his eyes adjusted to the brightness inside, he nearly let out a shout. It was a workshop, a bungalow, modest but full of character: the shining, pearly white, pried-open jaws of sharks lined every square foot of the walls, varying sizes and breeds. There had to be at least a hundred, all expertly-mounted on plaques and polished slabs of wood. A particularly large one hung over the window, its rows of sharp teeth framing the night sky, and it was definitely a great white. Matt’s heart pounded.

His eyes found the fisherman behind the slatted staircase to the cropped upper floor, and he looked him up and down. He wore a pair of jeans, torn at both knees, a sweater freshly stained with some sort of liquid, beneath a black leather apron slung around his neck but hanging loose at the waist. Several pots, at least a few feet deep each, steamed nearby, smelling only vaguely of fish. 

Hooper looked down at his own clothes, his bell-bottoms, penny loafers, with no socks, his tomato red collared shirt. Feeling a tad overdressed, he crossed his arms in front of him as he moved across the room.

“Here,” the man said bluntly, his arm extended behind him without looking. He held an old-fashioned whiskey glass, but the liquid inside was clear.

Trying not to make an effort to beeline straight to him, he took his time gazing up at the walls, studying each bone, each tooth, making his way slowly through the history of the man’s job, his life. When he got to the stairs, the glass was on a step waiting for him. Hooper took it in his hand, but didn’t take a drink. He could have smelled it from the door, it was so foul, but it still excited him.

“So, what’s your name?” Hooper asked again. 

“Quint.” The man was still turned around, busied with one of the pots. 

“Quint…? Quint what? Or is it a surname?” 

“What’s it to ya.”

Matt laughed shortly. “Forgive me, just feel more comfortable having a name to give to the cops if this is drugged.”

“If it was drugged, it’d be poison.” The man, Quint, turned around. He held a clear crystal bottle in one hand, another glass in the other. On his nose he wore a pair of almost comically small reading glasses, which he removed as soon as he measured out his own drink, tossing them amidst the rubbish on one of the countertops.

He raised the glass to Hooper’s, not close enough to touch, just a formality. Hooper raised his back and then took a tiny, delicate sip, sealing his lips to masquerade it as a much larger one. 

He was instantly thankful he did, as the half an ounce he did ingest made his eyes water. He couldn’t even tell what it was. He tried his hardest not to make a show of coughing or choking, suddenly aware that he was going full machismo, an attitude he otherwise absolutely hated. Why? This was a day full of “why”s. 

“That’s, uh, strong,” he said. “Where’s this from?” 

Quint pointed at one of the pots. Homemade. Hooper hoped he cleaned the vats between bone-cleansing sessions. 

“‘S great. Thanks.” Matt feigned another sip. “This is an incredible place you got here. You must have been doing this a long time?”

Quint made a noise of confirmation, but didn’t take the invitation to elaborate. He tried again. “Are they all from these waters?”

“All over the place,” Quint replied curtly, digging through a storage cabinet before grabbing a pair of long tongs, crusted over with something unidentifiable. “Mostly Atlantic. Few from the Gulf.”

“Mmm. That’s incredible.” Matt hated that he kept saying that word, so he tried to distract from it by blurting: “I grew up here.”

This made Quint raise an eyebrow. “Here?”

“Well, not _here_ , here,” he stumbled, “South Hampton, actually, but I spent a lot of my summers in the Cape. I uh, I do know these waters.” He took another sip, a full one this time, mostly out of desperation. “I can’t spend too much time inland. I get claustrophobic.”

“‘Magine you went to Yale,” Quint said. 

“I did.” Hooper said, curiously. “Had to. Three generations of Hoopers before me went to Yale. Then University of Florida, grad school. Then, I spent a couple years chasing sharks.”

Quint grunted, still didn’t look at him.

He took this as a positive sign. “I tagged them in Egypt. Dove with them in New Zealand. Now I’m here. It’s like having to travel the world to breathe.” He took another drink of the vodka, smoother still. “God, I love them.”

Quint moved around the table. “Dove with ‘em. Your dumb ass probably wants to see what it looks like from inside one.” 

That was what Matt was waiting for, what the hairs on the back of his neck were signaling was coming. Finally. Okay, this was the one man he couldn’t impress, but hell if that was going to stop him.

“Yes. I study them. I’m an ichthyologist. It’s my career.”

“Ain’t a career. A career is buildin’ for yourself, workin’, you’re just printin’ money to have machines do everything for you while you collect trophies.” He finished off his glass and set it on the counter with some force. “Bet Mommy and Daddy sure are proud, eh? Least their wallets are sweatin’ more than you do.”

“I’m sorry, _how_ do you get to all these sharks, again?” Hooper shot back, motioning to all the skeletons surrounding them. “A machine! A boat, a gun, hell, machinery produces those barrels you use to drown them — for, what, what was that?” He knew he was playing up the theatrics as Quint started fuming, but he kept on. “A… a… oh, I know, a _trophy_?!”

Quint outright dropped the tongs and crossed the room in just a couple of steps. Hooper kept his feet planted firmly on the ground, just like he had on the porch. He set his drink down without looking away; in fact, he matched his glare.

Quint was barely half a foot from his face. Terry was right, he might actually die here after all, but that was the last thing on his mind as Quint’s shadow overtook him. 

“Don’t you _ever_ condescend to speak like we’re some kinda fuckin’ equals,” he snarled. His liquid blue eyes looked black, narrowing, the flush of his anger spreading across his windburned cheeks. “I got a mouth to feed. You take your half-pint, uptown ass and fuck outta Amity ‘fore you overstep like that, son.”

“Petty cash really grinds your gears, doesn’t it?”

Quint didn’t reply. Didn’t back down, either.

“Whose mouth are you feeding?” Hooper asked.

Quint sucked the saliva from between his teeth. “Mine.”

“So am I,” Hooper said, tilting his head. He didn’t even blink as he added, “So, we’re equal.”

To say Quint could ignite a fire with his glare would be putting it lightly. Easily two or three inches taller than Hooper, he glowered down at him, the square of his shoulders almost trembling in such a rage. Behind him, one of the boiling pots started to overflow on the rangetop, but he probably couldn’t hear it with the blood rushing in his ears.

“You got a big mouth,” was all he said, eerily calm.

The worst move Hooper could’ve made was to let a smile spread across his face, a big, open-mouthed grin, but he did, he couldn’t help himself. There was nothing else left to do. He just laughed, peals of laughter, beyond the point of control, waiting for the punch. 

The punch never came. Quint just watched, with a black look, for as long as Hooper kept his eyes open, before his giggles subsided, head dipping between his shoulders.

Quint’s scowl seemed softer, didn’t it?

“Not as big as yours,” Hooper said, chancing a glance back up. 

Quint swallowed, adam’s apple bobbing amid the stiff, strained column of his throat. The squint of his eyes widened, just a hair, a millimeter.

“What a couple’a assholes.” He smirked.

Hooper felt a new chance surfacing, one he didn't fully comprehend, and he reached in the waning space between their faces and removed his glasses, before he leaned the rest of the way in and kissed him. Not hard, maybe even a little gentle, but, and despite the fact that he had no clue why he had done it, definitely not uncertain.

Quint didn’t move, or kiss him back, but didn’t pull away. He just stood there, letting Hooper get what he wanted, stoic, silent as one of Matt’s hands dropped feather-light to the front of his sweater. It took another moment or two of lingering, pressing against his rough, alcohol-tinged lips, before Matt finally took a step back, an argument ready to surface.

“Was that a yes or a no?” He kept his hand splayed on Quint’s chest, even as the older man crossed his arms over his front. “You’re confusing, Quint.”

“Queer,” Quint said. But he reached out, tucked his fingers underneath the waistband of Matt’s trousers, where his button-down was neatly pleated, tugging him forward.

It took his petrified knees a moment to cooperate, but he smirked right back.

 

The boat ride home turned into a hotel on the coast; it was too dark for four drunks to pilot their way back without incident. Hooper found himself bunked with Barb, which took a weight off his shoulders, but not before Terry pushed in, shoved him down on the bed and towered over him.

“Give it up, Hoop,” he said. “Did you kill the guy?”

“No,” Hooper said. “I’m exhausted. Can we discuss it in the morning?” 

“At length, yes, but just the bulletpoints will do. Did you fight him?”

“No.”

“Not even a slap?” Rochelle asked from the doorway.

Hooper didn’t answer directly, speaking to the ceiling. “We talked. He made vodka. It was very disgusting. Let me sleep.”

Terry leered over him, examining. “I don’t see any wounds. I think he’s telling the truth.”

Hooper reached for a pillow, mashing it over his head. “Go away.”

“I just don’t understand why on earth he invited you in if he wasn’t gonna beat the shit out of you.” Terry mercifully straightened back up, moving to join Rochelle at the door. “I still don’t know why you _went_ in, aside from your perpetual death wish.”

“Guess he just likes sharks. So do I.”

“Maybe he’s in love with you,” Rochelle suggested coolly. Hooper felt the stabs of the irony and buried himself further in the pillows.

“They probably tag-teamed a mako.”

“No way, a basking shark, less teeth. They don’t have lips, sugar.”

“I swear to god,” Hooper snapped, loudly even muffled underneath the feathers.

 “Goodnight, loverboy,” Terry sang over his shoulder as he let the door slam shut behind them. 

Finally, peaceful silence. He removed the pillow to find Barb looking over at him from her bed, just smiling. She didn’t say anything, not a word, but Hooper found himself nothing less than exposed under her gentle gaze. He turned onto his side, curling up on top of the comforter, kicking his shoes off but leaving his glasses on.

“The bar wasn’t fun, anyway,” Barb said simply. “See you in the morning.”

 

1975

Matt hopes the way he falls into line as the last one entering the little shack of a workshop doesn’t make him look too apprehensive. Maybe his wide eyes and slack-jaw stares around the endless sharp-toothed remains mounted on every square inch of wall pass off as wonderment, the grin he can’t wipe off his face simple excitement. While the collection has certainly grown, as has the mess, it smells exactly the same; an enticing mix of roadkill, smoke, and hydrogen peroxide.

He can hear the gruff voice making demands from the moment they step through the doorway, but Matt chooses to swallow it back, play it cool, edging his way around the studio as Chief Brody unintentionally wards off suspicion for him. He doesn’t seem as interested.

When Matt finally joins Brody at the stairs, Quint storms right between them without warning, stony, grumbling, and Matt’s ready, he stares right at him, but he still doesn’t pay him any mind, hasn’t since he entered the room. Won’t take the bait.

Brody’s clutching a shotglass uncertainly. Thank Christ. Hooper snatches it out of his hands.

“Don’t drink that,” Brody tells him, but Hooper downs the whole thing anyway, like he’s still in college. He needs it.

“M-Mr. Quint!” Not the bold homecoming Matt was envisioning; he has to cough it out three times. Quint’s home-brew hasn’t gotten any weaker in the last decade. 

But he presses on, flashing a toothy smile. “You’re gonna need an extra hand.”

“This is Matt Hooper,” Brody starts to say, but Quint cuts him off from up on his perch, finally looking at him.

“I know who he is.”

 

As Hooper slinks out of the shop, the waters of the Vineyard Sound lapping underneath the red line of the island sky, he pulls the cuffs of his shirt tightly into his palms, sealing them into a fist in each of his pockets. Soft, dainty, “city” fists.

He lets Brody lead him to the ferry as he smiles to himself, familiar, piercing blue eyes still boring down at him, plunging him right back into the shell of a clueless university kid in a tailored polo, sorely out of place in a little tourist trap of a beach, wandering the shorelines looking for a fight. Not somewhere he’d ever wanted to return, not vocally, but from the moment the Institute passed along the case of a boy from a little town called Amity, he knew right where he’d end up, and exactly who would be involved.

Quint knew, too.


End file.
